[dinosaur] Palaeogeranos, new crane from early Oligocene of France + fossils ostriches from China

Ben Creisler

New Cenozoic avian papers:

Palaeogeranos tourmenti gen. et sp. nov.

Antoine Louchart & AnaÃs Duhamel (2021)
A new fossil from the early Oligocene of Provence (France) increases the diversity of early Gruoidea and adds constraint on the origin of cranes (Gruidae) and limpkin (Aramidae).
Journal of Ornithology (advance online publication)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-021-01891-z
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10336-021-01891-z

Cranes (Gruidae) have a poor early fossil record, and the oldest ascertained fossils hitherto referred to the family (either as crown or stem-representatives) date back to the early or middle Miocene. Other Gruoidea have an even scarcer fossil record. Psophiidae and Aramidae are virtually unknown as fossils, and other fossil representatives of the Gruoidea are difficult to place. Here, we describe a new fossil that sheds new light on the early history of stem Gruidae, a right coracoid in dorsal view preserved on slab in limestone laminites of the early Oligocene ÂCalcaires de Campagne-CalavonÂ (Alpes de Haute Provence, France). It is compared with extant and fossil morphologically related taxa, and appears to differ from all extant and fossil relatives in the Gruoidea. The new fossil represents, among the Gruoidea, a new genus and species, Palaeogeranos tourmenti, placed within the clade (Aramidaeâ+âGruidae) that is referred to as epifamily Gruoidae. Within Gruoidae, placement is tentative and we give arguments leading to propose a possible position as a stem Gruidae, a hypothesis to be tested with further discoveries. In this hypothesis, aged around 30 million years, the new fossil suggests that the stem of the Gruidae would date back to at least the earliest Oligocene, which is still compatible with current molecular phylogenetic divergence dates estimations, given the confidence intervals. Palaeogeranos will potentially help refining future calibrations for molecular phylogenetic studies, at least concerning the earliest Gruoidae (Aramidaeâ+âGruidae).

Free pdf:

Eric Buffetaut (2021)
Dragonâs eggs from the "yellow earth": the discovery of the fossil ostriches of China.
Historia Natural (3rd series) 11 (1): 47-63
https://fundacionazara.org.ar/img/revista-historia-natural/tercera-serie-volumen-11-1-2021/HN11_1_47-63.pdf

Fossil ostrich eggs, mainly from the Pleistocene loess (the "yellow earth", huÃng tÇ in Chinese), have been known to the Chinese for a long time. They were sometimes interpreted as dragonâs eggs and were valued as curios. Palaeontologists first heard about them at the end of the 19th century, when a missionary in northern China obtained such an egg from a local farmer and sold it to Harvard University, where it was described by Charles Eastman in 1898, who referred it to Struthiolithus chersonensis Brandt, 1872, a taxon based on a fossil egg from Ukraine. More eggs obtained by missionaries subsequently found their way to various collections in the United States, Canada, Britain and Italy. The first western scientists to collect fossil ostrich eggs in situ in China, in the second decade of the 20th century, were the French Jesuit and naturalist Emile Licent and the Swedish geologist and archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson. Anderssonâs detailed investigations revealed that most of the eggs came from the Pleistocene loess, but eggshell fragments also occurred in older, Miocene deposits. A very large femur collected by Licent in 1925 from Lower Pleistocene sediments was not described until 2021. In a 1931 monograph on fossil ostriches from China, Percy Lowe erected the species Struthio wimani (based on a Miocene pelvis), S. anderssoni (based on eggs from the loess) and S. mongolicus (based on Neogene eggshell fragments from Inner Mongolia). The studies on fossil ostriches by C. C. Young and T. S. Shaw in the 1930s were part of the rapid development of palaeontological research carried out by Chinese researchers at that time.

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